I'll preface this by saying that I love the Senran Kagura games. Meanwhile, outside of one or two exceptions, I really do not like the Neptunia series. So, I guess I only have myself to blame for my disappointment. I only bought this because it's, well, a Senran Kagura game (kind of), and I'll do anything I can to support the series. I've probably been a complete fool for thinking that buying this would translate to supporting the Senran Kagura series.

I had vain hope that this would still play similarly to one of the SK Versus games, but it doesn't at all. There's only ONE attack button that you mash to do your ONE combo; there's no heavy attack button. This has me kind of fucked up because even "HDN U: Action Unleashed" and "MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies" had light and heavy attacks. Now, you can try to keep things fresh by throwing in Skills during your single-button-mash combo or by tagging in your partner, but that wears thin fast. Throwing a kunai/shuriken to sort of escape an enemy's range and apply a debuff to them really doesn't do it for me either.

What really grinds my gears the most though is that there are no dash cancels or jump cancels. If you're mashing your one-button combo, you cannot interrupt it by jumping or dashing, you have to stop pressing the button, wait for the last animation to end, and THEN you can jump or dash. It feels terrible.

Further more, you can take damage and even die when using skills. Blocking too, just feels really off and lacks any real impact. And no, there's no block canceling either. And getting a "Just Guard" does nothing except refills your stamina faster, which you can just do yourself with items from the shop anyway.

The Fuurinkanzan Drive feels lame and pretty one-note as a mechanic too, especially when the self-healing one will just seemingly keep you alive no matter what.

Now, this one's more of a nitpick, but when the Live2D sprites "talk" in cutscenes, their mouths just flap open and closed, and they aren't remotely synced to the actual voices. It looks really terrible and it would've been better to just not animate their mouths at all. The P & C Meditation minigame is a bore too.

This isn't a very good action game. Past Neptunia action games and all the main Senran Kagura games have had better combat & general game feel. The hour and a half I've put into this has really just kind of made me depressed.

Reviewed on Apr 28, 2022


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